New school is named for twice-freed slave
Newton Collins was a born a slave.
His mother was a slave, and his father was their owner, so he freed Collins soon after birth. Collins learned to read and write and was trained as a carpenter, working much of his younger years in Alabama. But after moving to Texas in the 1840s, Collins was enslaved again until he was emancipated in 1865 after the Civil War.
After gaining his freedom a second time, he purchased and traded swaths of farmland in Central Texas, including 506 acres in Pilot Knob, near what is now known as McKinney Falls State Park. He started a carpentry business, building homes and churches, and donated land for the first school in the area, which he paid to build and furnish, and he later hired the school’s first teacher.
Now, another school carries his legacy.
The 11,200-student Del Valle district, which consolidated with the Pilot Knob school district in 1952 and serves land that Collins once owned, on Monday opened its ninth elementary, named for Collins. The campus is believed to be the first modern school in Central Texas named for a former slave.
The district acquired the land from the developers of Easton Park, a master-planned community in Southeast Austin, who purchased the land from the Collins family. Members of the Collins
family detailed their ancestor’s contributions and asked school board members to name the school for him. After researching his history, the board unanimously approved the name.
Trustees wanted to present to their students — largely Hispanic and black and from low-income families — an example of someone who overcame arduous hurdles, valued education and gave back to the community, said board President Rebecca Birch.
“We wanted this kind of legacy,” Birch said. “There aren’t too many schools named after African-American individuals. To be frank, we didn’t want another white guy’s name on the building.
“Making sure our kids get that legacy of learning is what we want in Del Valle,
knowing what some of them have to go through,” she said. “There were people who came before them that laid that ground to make sure they are able to get that education.”
Collins is the great-grandfather of Austin civil rights activist Ada Collins Anderson — the first African-American elected to the Austin Community College board, in 1982, and the first black woman to sit on a bank board in Austin — who studied in the one-room schoolhouse Collins built.
“Of course, we are proud. He’s very deserving of the honor,” Anderson, 96, told the American-Statesman. “His ability and contribu- tion he made to this country is beyond description. You’d be amazed at the contributions that he made.”
The one-room schoolhouse is gone but was replaced by a Rosenwald School, one of thousands of schools built across the South for Afri- can-American children, which has been converted to a residence on Dee Gabriel Collins Road, named for Collins’ younger son.
Naming the school for Col- lins “plays a huge part in our culture,” Principal Suzi Gonzales said. “He was so much more than a freed slave. He made a real impact on his community.”
The 99,000-square-foot campus is at 7607 Apogee Road, on the fast-grow-
ing eastern edge of Austin. Growth in the district had been slow, increasing by 2,000 students over the past decade, compared with other areas of Central Texas. The district last built an ele- mentary school in 2011.
Collins Elementary has classroom space for 800 students. Construction cost $19.6 million and was paid for with a 2014 $134 million bond package. Gonzales said she’s expecting 650 to 800 students on the first day.
The campus incorporates elements designed to symbolize the nearby McKinney Falls State Park, including blue accents and rippling textures to represent water, limestone and wood.
“I love that the building itself is representative of the land around us,” Gonzales said.